The Bones of the Hills
by Nomad1
Summary: The old people called the biggest flints 'calkins', which meant 'chalk children'.


**Notes**: Written for tidelinear for Yuletide 2019.

**The Bones of the Hills**

It was the Feegles that found it. They had a gift for finding lost things; in fact, they were so good at it they could find them before they were actually lost, sometimes bypassing several fences and locked doors on the way.

Tiffany was fairly sure this one hadn't been stolen from a rightful owner, at least. You couldn't own people.

If it qualified as people. There was still some debate on the matter, but given that Tiffany's otherwise limited social circle included a toad who'd once been a lawyer and an entire clan of six-inch-high blue-tattooed pictsies, she was prepared to be flexible. The Feegles, however, seemed to be uncertain how to classify a being that didn't fit with their understanding of the world.

"It's no' nat'ral," Daft Wullie said, regarding the thing with some suspicion. "Big Yan gave it a face full o' heid an' it didnae even fall doon!"

"Aye," said Rob Anybody. "So then he applied a touch o' advanced thinkin' to the problem-"

"He headbutted it again?" Tiffany surmised, having some experience by now with the Feegle approach to problem-solving.

"Twice! Naebody takes three hits fra' one o' the Nac Mac Feegle an' stays awake tae tell the tale."

Tiffany had to admit that from what she'd seen that appeared to be true. Multiple headbutts from Big Yan to the skull of a full-grown horse wouldn't so much knock it down as nail its hooves into the ground. "And then what did you do?" she asked, somewhat resignedly.

"Weel, we gave it a kickin', just to make sure it wasnae keepin' its voonerables anywhere else, d'ye ken?" Rob said. In fact, she wasn't entirely sure what 'voonerables' were, but decided it was probably better not to ask. "An' since it didnae have much reaction tae that neither, we decided it must be somethin' powerful magical, an' since ye have the knowin' o' the hagglin..."

He shuffled his feet sheepishly. For a Nac Mac Feegle, admitting to being unable to fight something was rather akin to admitting to being unable to stand up straight. Actually, in the case of Feegles, that was considerably more likely, especially when they'd been into the Special Sheep Liniment, but they'd certainly never _admit_ to it.

There was an air of hopeful expectation from the assembled group.

She could have said: I don't really know that much about witchcraft yet, except that you can't know what you're doing until after you've done it, which isn't much help. Or: how can I possibly deal with something that can survive a kicking from a whole group of Feegles? Or even: does it actually need to be dealt with? It doesn't seem to be doing anything right now.

"Are you _sure_ it's a troll?" she said instead.

It looked, at first glance, like a calkin, one of those oversized knobbly flints that sometimes wormed out of the ground in people's back gardens, in that way they had of sprouting new stones no matter how tirelessly you'd cleared the same vegetable bed of all the rocks the year before. They were melted and strange, and always looked halfway to being alive, as if a sculptor had been trying to squash the stone into animal shapes from memory. Possibly quite a forgetful sculptor, working in the dark.

All the same, they never actually _moved_. She'd once sat and watched one intently for several hours to make sure, which was the sort of thing that told you quite a lot about Tiffany.

This particular one looked sort of squat and blobby, and a bit like a cottage loaf. If it was a troll, it was very well disguised.

"Ach, weel, ye cannae expect trolls tae be verra lively in the daytime, on account o' the whole turnin' tae stone business," Rob said.

"Aye, 'tis a cunnin' trick, what wi' them bein' made fra' stone tae begin with," Daft Wullie said, and the assembled Feegles nodded sagely.

Trolls might be made from stone, but she'd never heard of one being made from flint before. The Feegles weren't naturally liars, except when accused of crimes or they thought the truth might get them in trouble, but they _were_ prone to getting drunk and starting fights before they'd taken the time to make sure the enemy was strictly, if you wanted to get technical about it, actually there.

That's cruel, said her Second Thoughts, because, while she didn't precisely feel bad for questioning the Feegles' word, she felt that she ought to feel bad.

Yes, but things can be both cruel and true, said her Third Thoughts.

On the other hand, just because they could didn't mean that they were. The Feegles had brought her down to the river where she'd once hit Jenny Green-Teeth with a frying pan. Part of the bank formed a sort of pebble beach, and there were always smaller flints glinting among the stones. But calkins, the biggest ones, came from underground. She'd never seen one fetch up in the river. They were too heavy to get moved around by stray kicks and sliding mud, and they were still rare enough to be of interest when they were dug up, not like the ancient flint arrowheads the Feegles used for spears. So why was one planted neatly here on the riverbank, sitting oddly upright?

Tiffany had always liked words, and she liked the old words of Granny Aching's rare speech most of all. She'd learned to count in the _Yan Tan Tethera_ before she'd even learned that other numbers existed. 'Calkins' was one of Granny Aching's words.

It meant 'chalk children'.

The shadows across the rolling hills had been growing steadily deeper as they talked, running down the hillside towards the river. As the world darkened around them, Tiffany's First Sight, the witches' gift of seeing what was truly there, said: isn't it funny how that little chip in the flint just _there_ looks almost like an ear? And that lump sticking out - if you were a child prone to reckless acts of imagination, you could easy think that it looked very like a foot.

I didn't notice those things before when it was still light, said her Second Thoughts. It's just the darkness making it seem that way now.

Or, her Third Thoughts said, making it _be_ that way.

A pair of tiny white eyes glinted open in the black, and the flint troll unfolded in a way that made her think of shepherds' tools. Chip it thin enough, and flint was _sharp_, with an edge to it that even steel knives couldn't match. The troll might be small, but it was made of nigh indestructible rock and effectively armed with many deadly blades. You'd have to be mad to pick a fight with it.

"Right, lads, ready tae gi' the scunner a proper kickin' this time?" Rob said, to cheers from the gathered pictsies. "Where's Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin? Let's see how the beastie stands up tae a blast of the mousepipes!"

Tiffany didn't think it was quite fair to subject the troll to the trauma of Feegle poetry when it hadn't even done anything yet. "Wait!" she said. "Let's just see what it does first."

"Aye?" said Big Yan doubtfully. The Feegles were generally not big fans of any plan involving waiting. "Mebbe gi' the other lads a chance tae come an' join in wi' the kickin', ye mean?"

"Ach, 'tis true, we dinnae want anyone feelin' left oot," Rob agreed.

"I'm not sure it wants to fight at all," Tiffany said. In fact, the little troll didn't seem to have even noticed them. It was more interested in the pebbles at its feet, sorting through them aimlessly. As it picked one up to bite she had to restrain big sister instincts honed on stopping Wentworth from swallowing frogs.

There was a crunch, but it wasn't the breaking of the troll's needle teeth, which glittered like gemstones. It had bitten clean through the pebble.

"Crivens!" said Daft Wullie. "It's scraffin yon stones like can-a-pays at a party."

"Aye, but did ye not see?" said Rob. "It's got a face full o' jools!" There was a sound not unlike, say, a large number of small men in kilts all drawing their weapons in unison. Tiffany was getting _good_ at recognising those sorts of noises.

And she recognised something else too, as the little troll wobbled and then abruptly sat down on its backside. "Don't hurt it!" she said urgently. It was a move that she knew all too well from shepherding Wentworth home along the long chalk paths. "Can't you see? It's only a baby."

"Ach, the hag's right!" Rob said in dismay. "Yon wee beastie's nae more than a bairn." There was a sheepish reversal of the previous noise, which Tiffany mentally catalogued for the sheer novelty value. The Nac Mac Feegle would happily fight creatures as big as a house, and indeed even houses if they felt the furniture was looking at them funny, but they drew the line at attacking the weak and helpless.

"But how did a baby troll end up all the way down here?" Tiffany wondered. Being a fairly observant child regarding how sheep were turned into more sheep, she was aware of the general requirements to produce one, and there were definitely no other trolls on the Chalk.

"Mebbe it wuz hibbernatin'?" Rob suggested. "Sometimes if a troll disnae move for lang enough, it forgets that it's a troll an' starts believin' it's a rock. Usu'ly happens when they're auld an' get a dose o' the philosphy, where they get tae thinking too much an' forget tae keep movin', but I've heard of it happenin' sometimes if they get buried doon deep."

The travelling teachers had told her about the age of ice, when even the hills of the downs had been buried in snow. Perhaps trolls had lived here back then in the long ago and retreated to the Ramtops when the winter did the same, the flint gradually breeding out of them. But a few could have remained, small enough to lay buried deep in the ground, sleeping in the living land.

And... the people of the Chalk might make tools from lesser flints, but the most impressive calkins had always been left whole and placed out on display. One tradition among many, the origins long lost, but perhaps it had served another purpose once.

Perhaps people had been waiting to see if the chalk children woke up.

"The puir wee laddie's all alone, awa' fra' his ain kind," Daft Wullie said sadly. There were a few sniffs from the crowd. To the Feegles, who lived in clans with hundreds of their brothers, Tiffany supposed it must be almost unthinkable. Personally, growing up with six older sisters and fourteen cousins, she could have stood to have a bit more solitude - but then, the important thing about getting private time away from other people was knowing that they _were_ there to get away from.

"He can't stay here," she said. If the people of the Chalk didn't trust witches, they certainly wouldn't be kind to a troll. And while the young troll might be impressively impervious to blows from Feegle skulls, the shepherds of the Chalk knew too well that flint could chip flint.

"Nae problem," Rob said. "We'll send Hamish up intae yon mountains tae tak' a message tae the trolls up there. Hamish!"

The pictsies' aviator found his way through to the front, adjusting his goggles. Tiffany saw, with some resignation, he was still carrying her formerly best underwear strapped to his back to act as a parachute. "Aye, it's nae bother, mistress," he said. "Willnae tak' me more than half the night tae reach the lower slopes."

"Can the birds fly all that way in the dark?" Hamish typically travelled on the back of a buzzard that he'd trained the Nac Mac Feegle way, with a dose of kindness and a rather larger one of special oil that befuddled the bird into thinking he was its mother.

"Dinnae fash yersel', mistress," he said. "I've been training up a barn owl tae tak' oot on night survaily-ance, sort o' thing."

"But how would _you_ manage to see anything?" Tiffany wondered.

Hamish shuffled bashfully. "Ach, weel, bein' a hag and havin' the knowin' o' such matters, o' course ye'd spy the problem right away. I've also been ex-per-i-ment-in' with a wee bit o' wool and flint tae mak' some wee bitty lights tae drop, but the burdies dinnae like it much."

She hoped for everybody's sake the pictsies never actually mastered the art of dropping a rain of fire on the ground below. "All right, then. Let's just hope the Ramtops trolls are willing to take him." Though knowing the Feegle method of negotiation, they'd be headbutted into agreeing in self-defence.

As Hamish sped off, she turned to look back at the baby flint troll, which was crunching its way through some more pebbles. It was made entirely of stone, sitting on a pile of stones and eating another stone, and yet, against all logic, looked suspiciously sticky. Apparently some things about babies were universal.

"We'll watch o'er the puir wee laddie for ye," Rob Anybody said. "He'll bide fine a while here until they can tak' him intae yon mountains."

Tiffany would have liked to keep a watch on him herself, but her Second Thoughts pointed out that it would be many hours if not days, and her Third Thoughts added that even if it was a troll, it was still a baby. Minding Wentworth had always been unfathomably dull, the odd incursion from fairyland notwithstanding. It wasn't that she _objected_ to babies, exactly, it was just that they didn't make very interesting company. They were a lot like sheep, only much less useful.

She almost said, 'Well, if you don't mind,' but that was really just a weaselly way of saying, 'I don't want you to mind,' and Feegles were oblivious to diplomacy in any case.

"Tell me when the trolls get here," she said instead.

* * *

The trolls arrived on the Chalk shortly before dawn, with a remarkable degree of stealth for walking slabs of rock. The Feegles arrived in Tiffany's bedroom with considerably less, not least because she'd done her best to stuff up all the cracks that they'd previously snuck in by. They were very understanding about this, and always made sure to tuck all the rags back into place after they'd broken in.

Her sleep was broken by the sound of muffled arguing. For such a small people, the Nac Mac Feegle weren't very good at being muffled.

"_We cannae send the puir wee thing oot into the worrld wi'oot a name! 'Tis powerful bad luck, as ye all ken._"

"_Aye, but only the Kelda ha' the hiddlins o' the namin'!_"

"_Crivens! The Big Man disnae wan' us takin' the name that should rightfully gae tae his firstborn bairn. Besides, a troll needs tae ha' a troll name. Or else if he does anythin' they'll send the lawyers roond to oour place!_"

That set of a brief chorus of, "Ach, waily, waily!" from under the bed. Tiffany propped herself up on her elbows.

"_Weel, I still say Hard Wullie Mac Feegle is a verra fine troll name._"

"_Ye daft puddin'! Trolls always ha' a bit o' rock in their name sae they dinnae forget whut they are. Like Awf'ly Wee Pebble, ye ken?_"

The familiar sound of a Feegle scuffle broke out beneath her bed, punctuated by occasional cries like, "Rock Hard Wullie Mac Feegle!" and, "Wee Jock Flint!"

"Ahem," said Tiffany.

There was a guilty pause, and then Daft Wullie sidled out from underneath the bed, clearing his throat. "We wuz sent tae fetch ye by the Big Man," he said brightly.

* * *

Tiffany had never met a full-grown troll. As a rule, they preferred to stay up in the mountains, where the cool air helped their rock-based brains and they were less likely to be quarried by locals in need of building materials. Despite herself, she was a bit nervous. Everyone knew that modern, sophisticated trolls would never dream of eating anyone, but it was possible the news hadn't got around to all the more remote areas yet.

"Ach, they're nae trouble," Daft Wullie told her reassuringly. "Ye just lift them up an' carry their feet off in diff'rent directions. They dinnae think too fast, ye ken?"

That might sound like quite an assessment coming from a Feegle, but actually the pictsies thought extremely fast. It was just that generally their thoughts carried them off in the wrong direction before anyone else had a chance to stop them.

Rob Anybody was waiting down by the river, twiddling his rabbit-skull helmet in his hands as he kept watch over the baby troll. Right now it was happily bashing rocks with other rocks, which, from what she'd heard, was a skill that would get it fairly far in troll society.

"Guid, ye're here," Rob said, sounding relieved as he spotted her. "I dinnae ken the art o' deliverin' bairns, but ye'll ha' the knowin' o' that. 'Tis hagglin work."

This wasn't really the sort of delivering babies that witches handled, and Tiffany hadn't learned the art of midwifery yet anyway, but she didn't bother saying so. That was the whole point of being a witch, after all. You did whatever needed to be done that no one else was going to do.

Reaching up, she felt in the air for the invisible witches' hat Granny Weatherwax had given her, which wasn't technically real, or perhaps, because it was only the _idea_ of a hat, was more real than anything else. It told _her_ that she was a witch, and that was the important bit.

She stood tall and waited for the trolls to arrive.

There were three of them. They loomed out of the dark like the mighty standing stones that scattered the Chalk - or meegle-iths, as Tiffany called them in her head, being the sort of person who would memorise a word like 'megaliths' just in case she had the chance to use it, but not the sort who owned a dictionary with a pronunciation guide.

The mountain trolls definitely had the look of meegle-iths. They were broad enough to be almost rectangular, with large flat heads and no real necks. They were as craggy as the mountains themselves, and one of them was even growing moss.

There was a ripple of barely-restrained motion from the gathered Feegles, who typically reacted to the appearance of anything that looked vaguely dangerous by gleefully charging in to attack it. Non-hostile first meetings were, Tiffany thought to herself, definitely not their fortee.

"Der little man on der duck said dat yous had a baby troll," said the leftmost, who was also the largest. The one in the middle was considerably shorter and wider than his fellows, making the overall effect rather like a lopsided W.

"It was an owl," said Tiffany, who was also the sort of person who couldn't avoid correcting things like that.

"Yeah? Den why would he shout 'duck'?" said the mossy troll on the right, in the tones of someone who would have added 'QED' if he'd known what it meant.

Experience with the Feegles had taught her there were times when trying to explain the confusion would only make things worse. "Yes, we're the ones who sent you a message about the baby troll," she said.

The trolls nudged each other as they caught sight of the little one, which had stopped to watch, allowing the rock it had been sucking to fall out of its mouth. Tiffany suppressed the urge to tell it that it shouldn't put it back with the others once it was partly eaten.

"Dat's a flint troll!" said the tallest one, sounding impressed. "My great-great-great-grandfather told me about dem. Dey came up from der lowlands after der frozen times ended. He always said our family had flint in the veins."

The mossy troll scoffed. "Your great-great-great-granddad was molten in der head. Your family line's nuffink but shale."

But the mood had changed, and the tallest troll turned back to Tiffany to introduce the trio. "I'm Igneous an' dat's Marl, and an' _dis_ is Basaltic Trachyandesite."

"'Lo," said the squat troll, in a deep tone that could only be described as gravelly.

"I'm Tiffany Aching, and these are the Nac Mac Feegle," she said. The pictsies melted back out of the undergrowth where they'd been debating ambush in clearly audible hissed tones. Fortunately, the trolls ignored them, not being used to having any natural predators other than dwarfs with mining rights.

Marl squinted at her suspiciously. "Tiffany. Dat sounds like a _jewellery-maker's_ name to me."

The tone of the looming abruptly became more hostile again, and Rob Anybody tugged at the hem of her dress. "They hate joolers, d'ye ken?" he whispered, still rather loudly. "On account o' how their teeth are made fra' pure diamond." This caused some scuffling among the Feegle ranks as the lure of treasure cast its spell on the more reckless and hotheaded members of the group, which was all of them.

Tiffany raised her chin to meet the challenge. "It means Land Under Wave," she said.

"Dat's a good name," Marl allowed, relaxing. "Bit watery, but den, you're made o' meat. What der little one's name, den?"

"Troll should be named where it's from," rumbled Basaltic Trachyandesite, by way of explanation. "Makes us feel like we is part of der land, what is very important to young troll making his way in der world."

Tiffany understood that concept perfectly. Unfortunately, she also understood there was only one of her, and a great number of pictsies all about to enthusiastically shout their preferred names before she had any chance to stop them. The one advantage was that since they all yelled at once and absolutely none of them agreed on anything, it was pretty hard to make out individual suggestions.

"_Rock Jock!_"

"_Flint Stone Mac Feegle!_"

"_Awf'ly Hard Rock Wullie!_"

"Mac Awf'ly, was dat?" Marl echoed dubiously. He didn't so much wrinkle up his face as develop deeper crevices.

"Calkin," Tiffany corrected firmly. "It means child of the chalk. It's what we call a big flint."

That met with approval. "Big Flint's a _good_ troll name," Igneous said. "I know trolls dat would give dere rock formations to be called Big Flint."

"Then ye'll be takin' the wee laddie back tae the mountains wi' ye?" Rob Anybody asked.

"Dat's right," Igneous said. "Mac Awf'ly Calkin is still too young to be left on his own."

This seemed like another of the times it was probably better not to try to correct the mistake. "Make sure he grows up knowing about the Chalk, and where flint comes from," she said.

"Don't you worry about a fing," Igneous said. "Dey call flint der king of stones. What is rubbish, on account of dat being diamond, but he will be highly respected troll. Flint is good rock. Tough."

He lifted the baby flint troll with reassuring care, or as much of it as one walking slab of rock really needed to give to another. Mac Awf'ly - that name was going to stick, unfortunately - gazed up at him with wide-eyed interest, and promptly attempted to take a chomp out of his rocky finger. Igneous didn't seem to be bothered. "And now we take him back to der mountains, 'cos dis is no place for a young troll in daylight."

And with that, the group of trolls disappeared off into the shadows, heading for the mountain road. No thanks from little Mac Awf'ly, who didn't seem to have entirely noticed Tiffany had been there in the first place, and no reward from the other trolls they'd delivered him to. But that was what witchcraft was all about. Doing things that needed to be done, regardless of whether anyone else noticed or cared.

Beside her, Daft Wullie gave a big sniff. "Ach, 'tis always a sad an' happy thing, sending a lad off tae gae and join wi' his ain clan. Where's the gonnagle? Noo's the time tae play _The Bonny Flowers_ an' gae off drinkin' all night."

A ragged cheer rose up in support of this plan. There wasn't much of the night left, but Tiffany was sure the Feegles could make their drinking stretch from now to the end of the next night, just to get their money's worth. Or somebody's money, anyway, since they definitely wouldn't be paying for the drink.

"I'd better be getting back to the farm before anyone misses me," she said hastily. And more importantly, before the bubbling sensation of the mousepipes could start up in her ears. Even when not deliberately deployed as an offensive weapon, the pitch of Feegle music was uncomfortable to hear - or rather, feel - and the new gonnagle was still learning on the job.

She took the chalk paths back towards the farm. The sun had yet to appear as even a rosy glow over the hilltops, but Tiffany walked without fear. This was her land, and she was its witch, and anything that got in her way would have to learn to get out of it.

But preferably not now, her Second Thoughts admitted, because she _had_ been up part of the night. And whatever duties she might take on as a witch, there was still cheese to be made in the morning.


End file.
